


Where I Need to Be

by batmandeh



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Boys Being Idiots, Idiots in Love, M/M, impending college student stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-09
Updated: 2014-04-09
Packaged: 2018-01-18 19:15:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1439722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/batmandeh/pseuds/batmandeh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tumblr prompt fic. Derek helps Stiles pack for college.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where I Need to Be

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a tumblr prompt/meme fill for fuckyeahsablier. This is probably nothing like what she anticipated. Oops.

" _No_ ," Stiles bites out, jabbing a finger squarely in Derek's chest. He’s leaning awkwardly in to Derek’s space across the books strewn about his bedroom floor, knee slipping a bit when it comes down on an old paperback. "I don't care what sort of martyring kick you've found yourself in. I do not accept this. And also way not cool with the timing..." He gestures grandly as if in explanation.

Derek, for his part, just looks tired. Before Stiles had climbed over a cardboard box and half into his lap, Derek had been busying himself with lobbing a jumbled assortment of high school required reading and much rarer supernatural texts in to boxes without distinction. Somewhere between Stiles’ dog-eared copy of ‘Heart of Darkness’ and an ancient leather-bound tome that carried Lydia’s hastily written translations in the margins, Derek had found himself muttering, not for the first time, “Stiles, we need to talk about this…” 

_This_ being Stiles’ inevitable move on-campus to start college at Berkely at the end of the week. (That had been another argument entirely. That Stiles had given up a scholarship to Columbia on the grounds of needing to stay close to the pack). _This_ also being Derek’s insistence that their tentative relationship was headed towards some sort of natural conclusion that coincided with the last days of summer ticking away.

Well, bullshit. Stiles wasn’t getting written off as anyone’s ‘summer lovin’. Thank you.

He tells Derek as much, dragging his hands through his own messy hair with an exaggerated puff of breath. 

“Look, I’m still not sure how we managed to get our heads out of the sand and back into… whatever this is with us. But it took us long enough to figure it out, and it’s good, Derek. I’m not ready to give it up just because you’ve got some idiotic notion of what sort of college experience I deserve…”

Derek waits him out, one hand clutching the front of Stiles’ sweaty t-shirt and holding him at distance. They’ve been here before, trying to have this conversation. And more often than he’d like to admit, Derek’s resolve had cracked and gotten lost in a pile of discarded clothing. Or forgotten entirely as Stiles grabbed his face and kissed him furiously, biting at his mouth as if warning against Derek bringing “it” up again.

No. Derek is an adult. An adult with things like self-control and a capacity to make responsible and difficult decisions. And that’s more than half the point really.

He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath. Pretends he isn’t affected by the smell of Stiles this close, “You’re eighteen, Stiles. You’re young. And you’re going off to college. You should be free to explore and date and make stupid college decisions…”

“Free?” Stiles says in a low, mocking tone. And Derek flinches. He can’t help it. It rings far too close to a tone that once came from Stiles’ body but didn’t belong to him. Judging by the way Stiles shakes his head, dropping eye contact, he noticed it too.

“What if… what if I don’t want to be free?” Stiles continues, voice deliberately softer. “I don’t need the freedom to experience drunken frat party hook-ups, Derek. And that’s all it could be. You know that.”

Stiles flails out of Derek’s grasp and searches the room, grabbing an overflowing binder and shoving it at Derek’s chest. When Stiles started his research binder he was sixteen years old, and it had one tab for “werewolves.” He’d kept it under his mattress the way most teenagers hide lube or porn. Now it barely shuts, crammed with tab upon tab of printed articles and handwritten notes.

“Let’s be real, Derek. I’m never going to be free from this. You’re crazy if you think I could ever be with someone who doesn’t understand what… what we’ve all been through.”

Stiles scoots beside Derek and opens the binder where it lays across his lap. He leans into Derek’s space, flipping from tab to tab until he finally settles on one. He thumbs along the blue tab and looks up at Derek through his lashes. 

“This may not be what I would have expected for myself when I was sixteen, running through the woods like an idiot with Scott. But you’re kidding yourself if you don’t think I’m exactly where I want to be for the long haul. Where I’m needed…”

Stiles drums his fingertips along the binder, drawing Derek’s attention downward as he drags a knuckle under a word. He huffs out a breath before rising to his feet and leaving the room abruptly. Derek hears him rustling about in the kitchen, likely gathering bottles of water and something for lunch.

Derek takes a breath and glances down.

_Emissary._

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr:  
> http://batmandeh.tumblr.com
> 
> Let's be friends, k?


End file.
